The Body Book (Non-fiction)

Product Information

She was often the subject of controversy over the advice she gave in Petticoat, a magazine for the early teens. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. The following year Claire Rayner left The Sun and joined the Sunday Mirror and made her second television series, Claire Rayner's Casebook. We would definitely recommend it to friends to help with their children, and have even given it to parents we know as a gift when their child reaches a suitably inquisitive age!

In 1958 she wrote her first letter to the Nursing Times, complaining about working conditions for nurses. In 2001, after a lifetime supporting the Labour Party, she announced that she would be backing the Liberal Democrats.

In the same year she came to national attention when she published one of the earliest sex manuals, People in Love. Rayner helped Sense to promote "The Good Life" campaign booklet, tips on how to cope with sight and hearing loss in older age. On Sunday evening, I stayed alone with Claire in her hospital room for 15 minutes while the rest of the family talked to the wonderful doctor who oversaw her last days.

And yet recently it became clear that there was a generation, generally those under 30, who had no idea what the words "Claire Rayner" meant. If you appeared on one of the three television channels, and she did so an awful lot, be it Pebble Mill at One, TV-am or her own series, 10 million people or more would watch you at a time – huge numbers compared with today. Early on, as one of the first women looking for ways to balance the demands of motherhood with a working life, she concluded that her home would also have to be her office.

We take pride in offering a wide selection of used books, from classics to hidden gems, ensuring there? Despite what one reviewer described as the "explicit" content of the book, he commended Rayner on her "down to earth" approach to the subject. Finally, there was a television in almost every living room, and yet there remained a willingness to embrace expertise; a respect that, in the age of the much-vaunted democracy of the web, has gone. In time, a team of secretaries would work from the house, making sure every one of the 1,000 people a week who wrote to her would get the personal response they needed.

But she was unflinching in answering questions and, as a result, people felt able to ask her the difficult ones. I was looking for a book that explained body functions, sex, and death in a to the point frank way without being overly explicit. There are a few times when they use the term "baby making hole" instead of vagina and that was the type of wording I was hoping to avoid, but I think this is the best book I'm going to get and other than that phrase cropping up a few times I'm happy with it. Obviously my mother would have been gratified, but she would also, I think, have been a little surprised. It had been an emotional few hours since I had announced the death of my mother, Claire, aged 79, from complications arising out of intestinal surgery.

And if it was OK to discuss it – being gay, cross-dressing, waxing and waning libido, abortion, the evils of child abuse and violent marriages, the taboos of incest or underage sex, the huge technicolour cavalcade of being human – then the loneliness of a desperate problem was mitigated. Even so, Gordon Brown still invited her on to his commission on nursing and I know it gave her huge pleasure that, more than half a century after she started as a nurse, she was still being consulted on the best way to care for patients. Not too realistic yet accurate enough to explain what is happening during digestion, puberty, sex, childbirth and death.

They tweeted about her being an important part of their lives, about the way her Body Book for children provided their sex education. Diana, a Radiolab listener, says, "My mother left it in my room one day and 'it' was never mentioned again! My dear old mum had become the most discussed subject on the site, and almost everything that was being said came with the sort of warmth and affection that could only whack a grieving family right in the solar plexus. Having made her name as a columnist in magazines and newspapers, she became a distinctive figure on the television screen, and was once described as "the opposite of a shrinking violet. Rayner is Vice-President (and former President) of the British Humanist Association, a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

As thousands upon thousands of people have made clear to me over the past week, she was, for so many, more than just the kind of celebrity the internet age has gifted us. She also continued to appear on television, featuring on shows such as Pebble Mill At One and Good Morning With Anne And Nick.